Tag Archives: apple sauce

The other day Andy and I were talking about making some more items ourselves here at home. I already make my own garbanzo flour (it’s loud, but a Vitamix does a great job on dried garbanzo beans), and a few times I made my own almond milk, though I decided that was simply too labor intensive. One of the foods we realized I had never made was granola. It’s one of the easiest things to make and yet I had never even attempted it. Andy eats granola every morning for breakfast, and growing up his mom often made it. Today I decided to give it a go.

Here was my hangup: Granola is insanely sugary and fattening if made regularly. I don’t mind the fat coming from the nuts but many of the recipes I saw included both a bunch of sugar and or butter to make it clump. Gulp. No thanks.

I had this absolutely delicious granola a long time ago baked with applesauce. It was sweet, low in fat, and contained only a little sugar. I knew I needed to replicate it. I was okay with using some sugar, and some agave nectar as long as total it didn’t exceed one cup (with at least have of that cup being raw agave nectar, and the sugar being raw brown sugar). After some googling I came across this recipe at Fake Ginger.

Her recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

2½ cups old fashioned oats

1 cup nuts (pecans, walnuts, almonds)

½ cup sunflower seeds

¼ cup sesame seeds

¼ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

⅓ cup raisins

Instructions

Preheat oven to 300F.

In a large bowl, mix together oats, nuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, warm the applesauce with the honey and oil over low heat.

Mix the applesauce mixture into the oat mixture and stir to coat everything. Spread the mixture onto a 9 x 13 baking pan.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until the granola is a deep brown. Remove from oven and stir in raisins. Cool completely before enjoying.

This is what it looks like before baking. I messed up the focus on my camera so just look at that tiny strip of in focus mix *hits self in face*. This is what happens when I don’t use my camera very much for a couple months.

Since we limit animal products in our diets, and I already had raw agave nectar on hand I decided to make the switch from honey. My other changes included using cake spice instead of cinnamon since I was out, choosing pecans and walnuts for my nuts, and adding about a half teaspoon of vanilla.

Here are a few notes:

I did about 4 1/2 rounds of 10 minutes – meaning 45 minutes and it was a little browner than my personal preference. I’ll do 30 minutes next time but I have to say it did sets up to a nice crunch and adding the raisins in made it a lot tastier. I think it honestly just comes down to preference on this one. Andy thinks it’s fine.

Next time I will also either cut out the salt all together, or cut to 1/8 of a teaspoon. I found 1/2 to be too much. I’m fairly salt sensitive though, in general a little amount is plenty for me. It didn’t taste salty at all to Andy.

Be careful turning the granola every 10 minutes so you don’t break down the clumps too much. It’s not a clump intensive granola like some, and I don’t think you will get that with an apple sauce granola. It still clumped nicely though, but if you are too aggressive during turning you’ll break them up.

It’s held up really nice, and once it was entirely cool I put it in a tupperware. The key is to make sure that it is entirely cool. Very Very cool. You don’t want any residual heat or else it will turn chewy and blech.

One of the things I really enjoy about this recipe is that it’s pretty versatile if you follow the basic recipe. Next time I’ll likely go with almonds and dried raspberries. Mmmm so tasty.

Verdict: There’s no need to ever buy granola again. This was both super cheap, and super easy. Give it a try!

My name is Heather & this blog is all about my life with my husband Andy, our two wonderfully sneaky labrador retreivers Winnie and Rosie, and our little piece of countryside here in Maine. Check out the "About" tab above in the navigation to learn more about who we are, and why this blog is called "Like A Cup of Tea".

The Boring Mumbo Jumbo: Like A Cup of Tea is just my little blog documenting our life in our little piece of countryside in Maine. Please use common sense and caution when following any advice or tutorials on this blog. Like A Cup of Tea, the writer & those mentioned in the blog are in no way responsible for any mistakes, mishaps or costs involved with replicating items within the blog posts. The way we do things are simply how it worked for us. All photos, videos, icons, logos, headers and content are property of this blog unless otherwise specified and cannot be duplicated or modified in any way without previous approval of the blog owner, or content owner if otherwise specified. Links back to this site are welcome. Please see more on our privacy policy here